Politics is one thing — I strongly disagree with all of the Rep’s political views. But I can at least think that Huntsman is not some combination of stupid, corrupt, or insane. I can’t say that about Perry, Cain, Bachmann, Gingrich, Paul, or Santorum.
Given such a weak field, and given that people like Cantor, Boehner, and McConnell (and I’ll be happy if I spelled half the names right) love the spotlight, I’m wondering why they didn’t run. Surely they have the ego for it, and although I detest their political views, they wouldn’t look as idiotic as the people who are running, so they might have a decent shot.
I understand that. I do find myself wondering how much of what these loons say is actually their opinion, or just part of the act they need to keep up to get the fringe votes. Most of these people aren’t stupid…they are calculating and manipulative (though I also think they’d be terrible presidents). And that scares me, because it’s choosing to be perceived as an ignorant, intolerant, stupid buffoon in order to appeal to even more ignorant, intolerant, stupid people that I wouldn’t trust to guard a pair of used socks.
I guess I don’t feel that politics should be theatrical or entertainment; the US presidential neverending election is just theatre most of the time, and if some aspect of the world doesn’t boil down to a sound bite or catch-phrase, it’s automatically evil and distrusted.
The whole thing really is entertaining…until I remember that (hyperbolically) the US and their “crazy politics” could bring us all down with them.
Then again, we have Captain Sweatervest at the helm, so I’m not too sure who is winning what here.
because the stats show that it’s harder to take out an incumbent than when you’re running against a new guy. Obama may be vulnerable on some points, but he’s not clearly in trouble; so if you’re thinking about a run, you may gamble that Obama gets re-elected and plan to run in the next cycle; especially if you’re relatively young, like Cantor or Jindal.
that kind of calculation doesn’t always work, of course: Bill Clinton being the prime example of someone who ignored that and won; Mario Cuomo made that calculus and lost out in 1992, by not running.
Like you said, you’re not an American. You might not be aware that pretending to be an ignorant etc. to appeal to the voters is an American political tradition. It goes back at least to 1840, when Harrison beat Van Buren by portraying Van Buren as an elitist aristrocrat and himself as a plain common “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” man (actually, Harrison was himself just as aristocratic by American standards).
If I ever come home and find my Dad wearing a sweatervest, I’m having him examined for signs of a stroke. :smack:
Italics mine.
Oh, I’m aware of it. We get all the major American news/networks/cable channels up here (and we are subscribed to them), and through these boards and the rest of the internet I probably know more random facts about the USA than I do about Canada (I’m not proud of that, but we really are flooded with information coming out of the States).
It’s an incredibly naive Canadian that doesn’t realize that what happens in American politics has an impact on what happens to us in our country. We can’t get away from the fact that we are such close neighbours with such strongly intertwined economies.
Also, we get a perverse little thrill whenever an American politician mentions Canada. You should see the parties we throw when we make the Daily Show or the Colbert Report…
With the exception of Pawlenty and perhaps Rubio, the rest of that list belongs on the clown car with the current crop of yahoos.
Huckabee would fit right into the current slate of weak candidates. His appeal is too narrowly focused in evangelicals, and his statement about changing the Constitution to reflect God’s law like some Christian Sharia law would alienate moderates and independents.
Jindal would need a complete makeover. Maybe it plays well in Louisiana, but his speaking style appears comical to the rest of the country. Like many conservatives, Jindal also suffers from “too earnest by half” syndrome, where they think they can make up for lack of substance with an excess of enthusiasm.
Giuliani might have had a chance if his rhetoric wasn’t limited to a noun, a verb, and “9/11”. The country has moved on; they want their Republicans to keep up with the latest fear mongering, not the boogeyman of ten years ago.
Strange women in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!
I eagerly look forward to reading the history books’ take (say 50 years from now-yes I have had several relatives who were centenarians or nearly so) on the current crop of candidates, and just bask in the disbelief that anybody anywhere thought any of these bozos were qualified for anything more than the local dog poop picker upper.
Actually, that complaint comes up in Joe McGinniss’ Selling of the President 1968. It’s an article of faith for Nixon’s media advisor, a young television producer named Roger Ailes.
It’s not the candidates that are the problem, it’s americans in general and the republican base most of all. I doubt any of the people running for president on either side believe that intelligent design should be taught in schools, that global warming isn’t real and man made, that cutting taxes is the solution to everything, that gay marriage is wrong or any of the other idiotic positions they have to support in order to have a chance at being nominated. They HAVE to look like complete idiots to get the complete idiots that vote for them to chose them.
GOP candidates no longer represent anything but corporate interests, yet are forced by the system to attempt to convince voters that they represent the actual American population.
Their appearance of idiocy springs from their need to peddle their views. They can’t run on what they actually intend to do, which is remove all barriers to the corporate rape of the majority of America’s population. So they twist it and turn it to convince people that they actually want to make this a theocracy, or that Muslims hate oil and so do liberals, so the only patriotic thing to do is poison the water supply with methane and fracking fluid. And wealthy people need more tax cuts, and the poor and the weak need to be cut off because the inherent immorality of those groups turns them into an unfair burden on us good, white people.
They need to somehow sucker the evangelicals once again into believing that lying about who they really represent (Mammon) is somehow the ultimate Christian stance against the straw man they’ve spent so much effort creating: liberals. It is tricky and requires enormous amounts of bullshit.
